scholarly journals Cytotoxic T cells clear virus but augment lung pathology in mice infected with respiratory syncytial virus.

1988 ◽  
Vol 168 (3) ◽  
pp. 1163-1168 ◽  
Author(s):  
M J Cannon ◽  
P J Openshaw ◽  
B A Askonas

We have examined the function of class I MHC-restricted cytotoxic T cells in experimental respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection of BALB/c mice by transfer of T cell line MJC-A2 and CTL clone E8a into RSV-infected mice. The T cell line cleared pulmonary RSV infection within 5 d in persistently infected gamma-irradiated mice, but caused acute respiratory disease. This was only seen in infected mice and was often lethal after transfer of greater than 3 x 10(6) CTL. Lower numbers of CTL produced less severe disease but still cleared lung RSV, albeit over a longer time course (up to 10 d). Clearance of lung RSV in immunocompetent mice by the T cell line and CTL clone was again accompanied by acute and sometimes lethal respiratory disease. Bronchoalveolar lavage showed severe lung hemorrhage and frequent neutrophil efflux in mice with CTL-augmented disease.

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. e1009529
Author(s):  
Thomas Démoulins ◽  
Melanie Brügger ◽  
Beatrice Zumkehr ◽  
Blandina I. Oliveira Esteves ◽  
Kemal Mehinagic ◽  
...  

The human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major cause of severe lower respiratory tract infections in infants, possibly due to the properties of the immature neonatal pulmonary immune system. Using the newborn lamb, a classical model of human lung development and a translational model of RSV infection, we aimed to explore the role of cell-mediated immunity in RSV disease during early life. Remarkably, in healthy conditions, the developing T cell compartment of the neonatal lung showed major differences to that seen in the mature adult lung. The most striking observation being a high baseline frequency of bronchoalveolar IL-4-producing CD4 and CD8 T cells, which declined progressively over developmental age. RSV infection exacerbated this pro-type 2 environment in the bronchoalveolar space, rather than inducing a type 2 response per se. Moreover, regulatory T cell suppressive functions occurred very early to dampen this pro-type 2 environment, rather than shutting them down afterwards, while γδ T cells dropped and failed to produce IL-17. Importantly, RSV disease severity was related to the magnitude of those unconventional bronchoalveolar T cell responses. These findings provide novel insights in the mechanisms of RSV immunopathogenesis in early life, and constitute a major step for the understanding of RSV disease severity.


2009 ◽  
Vol 83 (10) ◽  
pp. 4934-4941 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Liu ◽  
Tracy J. Ruckwardt ◽  
Man Chen ◽  
Teresa R. Johnson ◽  
Barney S. Graham

ABSTRACT CD4 T cells have been shown to play an important role in the immunity and immunopathogenesis of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. We identified two novel CD4 T-cell epitopes in the RSV M and M2 proteins with core sequences M213-223 (FKYIKPQSQFI) and M227-37 (YFEWPPHALLV). Peptides containing the epitopes stimulated RSV-specific CD4 T cells to produce gamma interferon (IFN-γ), interleukin 2 (IL-2), and other Th1- and Th2-type cytokines in an I-Ab-restricted pattern. Construction of fluorochrome-conjugated peptide-I-Ab class II tetramers revealed RSV M- and M2-specific CD4 T-cell responses in RSV-infected mice in a hierarchical pattern. Peptide-activated CD4 T cells from lungs were more activated and differentiated, and had greater IFN-γ expression, than CD4 T cells from the spleen, which, in contrast, produced greater levels of IL-2. In addition, M209-223 peptide-activated CD4 T cells reduced IFN-γ and IL-2 production in M- and M2-specific CD8 T-cell responses to Db-M187-195 and Kd-M282-90 peptides more than M225-39 peptide-stimulated CD4 T cells. This correlated with the fact that I-Ab-M209-223 tetramer-positive cells responding to primary RSV infection had a much higher frequency of FoxP3 expression than I-Ab-M226-39 tetramer-positive CD4 T cells, suggesting that the M-specific CD4 T-cell response has greater regulatory function. Characterization of epitope-specific CD4 T cells by novel fluorochrome-conjugated peptide-I-Ab tetramers allows detailed analysis of their roles in RSV pathogenesis and immunity.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Démoulins ◽  
Melanie Brügger ◽  
Beatrice Zumkehr ◽  
Blandina I. Oliveira Esteves ◽  
Kemal Mehinagic ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a major cause of severe lower respiratory tract infections in infants, possibly due to the specific features of the immature neonatal pulmonary immune system. Using the newborn lamb, a classical model of human lung development and a state-of-the-art model of RSV infection, we aimed to explore the role of cell-mediated immunity in RSV disease during early life. Remarkably, in healthy conditions, the developing T cell compartment of the neonatal lung showed major differences to that seen in the mature adult lung. The most striking observation being a high baseline frequency of bronchoalveolar IL-4-producing CD4 and CD8 T cells, which declined progressively over developmental age. RSV infection exacerbated this pro-type 2 environment in the bronchoalveolar space, rather than inducing a type 2 response per se. Moreover, regulatory T cell suppressive functions occurred very early to dampen this pro-type 2 environment, rather than shutting them down afterwards, while γδ T cells dropped and failed to produce IL-17. Importantly, RSV disease severity was related to the magnitude of those unconventional bronchoalveolar T cell responses. These findings provide novel insights in the mechanisms of RSV immunopathogenesis in early life, and constitute a major step for the understanding of RSV disease severity.AUTHOR SUMMARYBy using a state-of-the-art translational model with full accessibility to the small airways at defined early life periods, we provide an unpreceded characterization of the developing T cell compartment in the distal lungs of healthy and RSV-infected neonates. This process is highly dynamic and tightly regulated, characterized by colonizing T-cell subsets that synergize towards a narrow pro-tolerogenic immunological window. We believe our work constitutes a solid basis to clarify the age dependency of RSV immunopathogenesis, and should be considered in vaccine design, which remains challenging after five decades of effort.


Author(s):  
Alex Grier ◽  
Ann L Gill ◽  
Haeja A Kessler ◽  
Anthony Corbett ◽  
Sanjukta Bandyopadhyay ◽  
...  

Abstract Rationale Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a leading cause of infant respiratory disease. Infant airway microbiota has been associated with respiratory disease risk and severity. The extent to which interactions between RSV and microbiota occur in the airway, and their impact on respiratory disease susceptibility and severity, are unknown. Objectives Characterize temporal associations between microbiota and RSV infection before, during, and after infants’ first respiratory illness. Methods 16S rRNA microbiota profiling of two infant cohorts in the first year of life: 1) a cross-sectional cohort of 89 RSV infected infants sampled during illness and 102 matched healthy controls, and 2) a matched longitudinal cohort of 12 infants who developed RSV infection and 12 who did not, sampled before, during, and after infection. Results We identified 12 taxa significantly associated with RSV infection. All 12 taxa were differentially abundant during infection, with 8 associated with disease severity. Nasal microbiota composition was more discriminative of healthy vs. infected than of disease severity. Conclusions Our findings elucidate the chronology of nasal microbiota dysbiosis and suggest an altered developmental trajectory associated with RSV infection. Microbial temporal dynamics reveal indicators of disease risk, correlates of illness and severity, and impact of RSV infection on microbiota composition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 481-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clark D. Russell ◽  
Stefan A. Unger ◽  
Marc Walton ◽  
Jürgen Schwarze

SUMMARY Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is an important etiological agent of respiratory infections, particularly in children. Much information regarding the immune response to RSV comes from animal models and in vitro studies. Here, we provide a comprehensive description of the human immune response to RSV infection, based on a systematic literature review of research on infected humans. There is an initial strong neutrophil response to RSV infection in humans, which is positively correlated with disease severity and mediated by interleukin-8 (IL-8). Dendritic cells migrate to the lungs as the primary antigen-presenting cell. An initial systemic T-cell lymphopenia is followed by a pulmonary CD8+ T-cell response, mediating viral clearance. Humoral immunity to reinfection is incomplete, but RSV IgG and IgA are protective. B-cell-stimulating factors derived from airway epithelium play a major role in protective antibody generation. Gamma interferon (IFN-γ) has a strongly protective role, and a Th2-biased response may be deleterious. Other cytokines (particularly IL-17A), chemokines (particularly CCL-5 and CCL-3), and local innate immune factors (including cathelicidins and IFN-λ) contribute to pathogenesis. In summary, neutrophilic inflammation is incriminated as a harmful response, whereas CD8+ T cells and IFN-γ have protective roles. These may represent important therapeutic targets to modulate the immunopathogenesis of RSV infection.


2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (15) ◽  
pp. 7636-7645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuancheng Guo ◽  
Taixiang Liu ◽  
Hengfei Shi ◽  
Jingjing Wang ◽  
Ping Ji ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTRespiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of acute respiratory tract viral infection in infants, causing bronchiolitis and pneumonia. The host antiviral response to RSV acts via retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I). We show here that RSV infection upregulates major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) expression through the induction of NLRC5, a NOD-like, CARD domain-containing intracellular protein that has recently been identified as a class I MHC transactivator (CITA). RSV infection of A549 cells promotes upregulation of NLRC5 via beta interferon (IFN-β) production, since the NLRC5-inducing activity in a conditioned medium from RSV-infected A549 cells was removed by antibody to IFN-β, but not by antibody to IFN-γ. RSV infection resulted in RIG-I upregulation and induction of NLRC5 and MHC-I. Suppression of RIG-I induction significantly blocked NLRC5, as well as MHC-I, upregulation and diminished IRF3 activation. Importantly, Vero cells deficient in interferon production still upregulated MHC-I following introduction of the RSV genome by infection or transfection, further supporting a key role for RIG-I. A model is therefore proposed in which the host upregulates MHC-I expression during RSV infection directly via the induction of RIG-I and NLRC5 expression. Since elevated expression of MHC-I molecules can sensitize host cells to T lymphocyte-mediated cytotoxicity or immunopathologic damage, the results have significant implications for the modification of immunity in RSV disease.IMPORTANCEHuman respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia in infants and young children worldwide. Infection early in life is linked to persistent wheezing and allergic asthma in later life, possibly related to upregulation of major histocompatibility class I (MHC-I) on the cell surface, which facilitates cytotoxic T cell activation and antiviral immunity. Here, we show that RSV infection of lung epithelial cells induces expression of RIG-I, resulting in induction of a class I MHC transactivator, NLRC5, and subsequent upregulation of MHC-I. Suppression of RIG-I induction blocked RSV-induced NLRC5 expression and MHC-I upregulation. Increased MHC-I expression may exacerbate the RSV disease condition due to immunopathologic damage, linking the innate immune response to RSV disease.


2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (21) ◽  
pp. 10240-10244 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. H. Brandenburg ◽  
L. de Waal ◽  
H. H. Timmerman ◽  
P. Hoogerhout ◽  
R. L. de Swart ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Virus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) play a major role in the clearance of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. We have generated cytotoxic T-cell clones (TCC) from two infants who had just recovered from severe RSV infection. These TCC were functionally characterized and used to identify HLA class I (B57 and C12)-restricted CTL epitopes of RSV.


2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (15) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Schneider-Ohrum ◽  
Angie Snell Bennett ◽  
Gaurav Manohar Rajani ◽  
Leigh Hostetler ◽  
Sean K. Maynard ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTRespiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection of seronegative children previously immunized with formalin-inactivated (FI) RSV has been associated with serious enhanced respiratory disease (ERD). The phenomenon was reproduced in the cotton rat and the mouse, and both preclinical models have been routinely used to evaluate the safety of new RSV vaccine candidates. More recently, we demonstrated that immunizations with suboptimal doses of the RSV fusion (F) antigen, in its post- or prefusion conformation, and in the presence of a Th1-biasing adjuvant, unexpectedly led to ERD in the cotton rat model. To assess if those observations are specific to the cotton rat and to elucidate the mechanism by which vaccination with low antigen doses can drive ERD post-RSV challenge, we evaluated RSV post-F antigen dose de-escalation in BALB/c mice in the presence of a Th1-biasing adjuvant. While decreasing antigen doses, we observed an increase in lung inflammation associated with an upregulation of proinflammatory cytokines. The amplitude of the lung histopathology was comparable to that of FI-RSV-induced ERD, confirming the observations made in the cotton rat. Importantly, depletion of CD4+T cells prior to viral challenge completely abrogated ERD, preventing proinflammatory cytokine upregulation and the infiltration of T cells, neutrophils, eosinophils, and macrophages into the lung. Overall, low-antigen-dose-induced ERD resembles FI-RSV-induced ERD, except that the former appears in the absence of detectable levels of viral replication and in the context of a Th1-biased immune response. Taken together, our observations reinforce the recent concept that vaccines developed for RSV-naïve individuals should be systematically tested under suboptimal dosing conditions.IMPORTANCERSV poses a significant health care burden and is the leading cause of serious lower-respiratory-tract infections in young children. A formalin-inactivated RSV vaccine developed in the 1960s not only showed a complete lack of efficacy against RSV infection but also induced severe lung disease enhancement in vaccinated children. Since then, establishing safety in preclinical models has been one of the major challenges to RSV vaccine development. We recently observed in the cotton rat model that suboptimal immunizations with RSV fusion protein could induce lung disease enhancement. In the present study, we extended suboptimal dosing evaluation to the mouse model. We confirmed the induction of lung disease enhancement by vaccinations with low antigen doses and dissected the associated immune mechanisms. Our results stress the need to evaluate suboptimal dosing for any new RSV vaccine candidate developed for seronegative infants.


2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (8) ◽  
pp. 4889-4900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Jordan ◽  
Matt Shao ◽  
Richard L. Mackman ◽  
Michel Perron ◽  
Tomas Cihlar ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTRespiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of bronchiolitis and pneumonia in infants. Effective treatment for RSV infection is a significant unmet medical need. While new RSV therapeutics are now in development, there are very few animal models that mimic the pathogenesis of human RSV, making it difficult to evaluate new disease interventions. Experimental infection of Holstein calves with bovine RSV (bRSV) causes a severe respiratory infection that is similar to human RSV infection, providing a relevant model for testing novel therapeutic agents. In this model, viral load is readily detected in nasal secretions by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR), and cumulative symptom scoring together with histopathology evaluations of infected tissue allow for the assessment of disease severity. The bovine RSV model was used to evaluate the antiviral activity of an RSV fusion inhibitor, GS1, which blocks virus entry by inhibiting the fusion of the viral envelope with the host cell membrane. The efficacy of GS1, a close structural analog of GS-5806 that is being developed to treat RSV infection in humans was evaluated in two randomized, blind, placebo-controlled studies in bRSV-infected calves. Intravenous administration of GS1 at 4 mg/kg of body weight/day for 7 days starting 24 h or 72 h postinoculation provided clear therapeutic benefit by reducing the viral load, disease symptom score, respiration rate, and lung pathology associated with bRSV infection. These data support the use of the bovine RSV model for evaluation of experimental therapeutics for treatment of RSV.


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